Tuesday, September 18, 2012

We rejoin our story a number of years later, where we find a triumphant Dr. Charles Lawrence Xavier, VI, attending a victory celebration for the newly elected President...

A beaming Charles wheeled his chair onto the stage behind the newly elected Vice President, who had just taken to the podium to address the adoring crowd.

"I'm not so sure it was wise to make that BIDEN thing you created the Vice President," a concerned David Axelrod, Presidential Campaign Advisor, whispered into his ear as BIDEN began speaking to the assembled multitude.

"Yes, well, we had to insure no one would be tempted to harm the President," replied Charles. He then began to chuckle as he added, "and who in their right mind would ever risk doing so when it would put that thing in charge of the country?"

Axelrod laughed, "Yes, yes, I see your point, Charles! Touché!"

The BIDEN android [Blithering Idiot Disseminating Endless Nonsense] had been created several years earlier after a freak plagiarism accident had maimed a once promising young Senator from Delaware. In a miracle of bio-engineering, Charles and a couple of solid B+ students from the DeVry Institute of Technology had managed to save his head and attach it to a small, floating, android-like body. Unfortunately, the massive brain damage that had occurred during the Senator's birth many years earlier in Scranton, Pennsylvania, proved to be irreversible.

"...And where would we be today without this guy?" BIDEN uttered, turning to look in Charles' direction and pointing at him from the podium as he continued his victory speech. I just want to take a moment to say, thanks for all you've done for the cause, Chuck!"

'Chuck?' thought a horrified Charles, 'Did he just call me... Chuck???' He looked BIDEN directly in the eyes and began frantically waving his hands and shaking his head 'No!' from his wheelchair.

Charles faked a smile and nodded to the crowd, waving his hands politely, all the while wondering if making BIDEN the V.P. was a truly dreadful mistake after all.

Suddenly, an older gentleman climbed onto the stage unexpectedly from out of the crowd. As the Secret Service rushed in to surround him, BIDEN thought that he may actually recognize the man.

"Say, aren't you Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee?" Inquired BIDEN.

"Yes, yes I am!...," Replied the older gentleman.

"Hey, look, everybody," hollered an excited BIDEN to the crowd, "Stan Lee is making his customary cameo appearance!"

The crowd cheered for Stan Lee.

"No, no, no!" Protested an obviously distraught Mr. Lee, "I'm here to put a stop to this outrage! I can't just sit by and watch you people make such a mess of my life's work. Quite frankly, it makes me want to vomit!"

Just then, several more burly Secret Service Agents descended on Stan Lee and quickly began dragging him off the stage.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

"It was a dark and stormy night," typed a small white beagle perched atop a doghouse with an impossibly large slanted roof as a mysterious man in a sleek, futuristic-looking wheelchair ambled by him unnoticed, his rather egg-shaped bald head gleaming brightly in the morning sunlight.

Dr. Charles Lawrence Xavier, VI, a prominent Georgetown University Law Professor and a member of an elite Washington think-tank, was out for his morning "roll" through a section of Georgetown heavily populated by an odd mixture of comic-page characters and young college students.

"Good morning, Charles!" Shouted a sweet-looking little man with a huge head and a grin to match, waving politely as he retrieved the morning paper from his front porch, his little white dog wagging its tail in approval.

"Good morning, Ziggy!" Charles hollered back in mock-plesantry, then muttered under his breath, "Riff-raff!"

Dr. Xavier rambled on until he came to a construction site in Foggy Bottom. After carefully wheeling himself into position in the shadows behind the construction barriers, well out of the public eye, he pushed a series of buttons on the fancy control panel hidden in the armrest of his mobile chair. Slowly, quietly, he and his chair sank beneath the noisy city streets to the secret lair below.

"Ah! At last, Charles! We've been waiting for you!" A hooded figure proclaimed as Charles drove himself into view. "The members of the board are waiting, and some of them are growing quite restless!"

"Relax, my old friend," Replied a smirking Charles, confidently, "I shall soon put all of their fears --- and yours --- to rest."

"You'd better! We have an awful lot of time, money and resources tied up in this plan of yours," the hooded man shot back, "and failure is not an option!"

"Relax, Mr. S, I assure you it will work." Charles said as a sly chuckle escaped from him.

At the end of a long corridor, a pair of sliding doors opened at the approach of the two men, and they proceeded inside to the well-lit bunker boardroom, where numerous robed and hooded men and women were seated around a huge, fancy wooden table, chattering amongst themselves. The mysterious Mr. S took his seat near the head of the table in a heavily ornate chair. Charles, meanwhile, wheeled himself into position at the very front of the room. A hush came over those gathered and all eyes focused on the man they had entrusted with their considerable combined power and wealth in the hope of finally achieving their dream of altering America... and the rest of the world... forever!

"Gentlemen... and ladies... welcome to the future of America!" Dr. Charles Lawrence Xavier, VI, greeted the assembled group of mysterious and powerful benefactors gathered in the ultimate hidden bunker boardroom far below the unsuspecting streets of the most important city in the world.

"Today we begin a journey that will bring about the kind of change we have long sought, but which has, thus far, eluded our grasp," the wheelchair-bound genius continued.

"We've heard this same crap before!" Yelled out one of the many hooded figures at the large wooden table, "Why should we believe you?"

"Why, indeed?" A smirking Charles responded. "Because, this time, the people will do whatever it is we say. After all, we're the smartest, most qualified people in all the world!"

"Says who?" The skeptic shouted back.

"Says everyone!" Charles told him, as the exchange continued back and forth...

"Oh, really? Why exactly would they say that?"

"Because, my friend, they truly believe it to be so."

"And why, pray tell, is that?"

"Because they have heard everyone else tell them that for as long as they can remember... which, luckily for us, is a relatively short period of time."

"Why would everyone be saying such things?"

"Because of all the awards and accolades we have won! Only geniuses win such awards from their peers."

"What peers?"

"Ourselves! We simply begin forming new groups whose purpose it is to hand out honors to the smartest people in the world! A great many of them! Of course, all of these groups will be controlled by us, and we will decide who get the awards, which of course will be ourselves and others like us, who will in turn award us with more accolades. Soon, we will also take over all of the other traditional groups which hand out such honors, and likewise influence them! Before too long, it all becomes one giant circle-jerk of awards and honors and titles being passed out amongst ourselves."

"And what does all this accomplish?"

"Isn't it obvious? The whole world, or at least most of it, will be convinced that we are the most intelligent people among them. The very best and brightest the world has to offer."

"And no one will question this?"

"Who would dare? All of the people will know who the smartest people are, it will be obvious. They are the ones with all of the fancy awards and honors and titles. Anyone who questions that will, as a rule, be unintelligent."

"Who says so?"

"We do! As a result, so does most everyone else. All of the smartest people say all of the people who disagree with them are morons. Whom are you going to agree with? The smartest people, which makes you smart, too... or the morons, which tells everyone how very, very stupid you must be?"

"Hmmm. I think I like where this is going! So, I'm a genius, huh?"

"If I say so. After all, I'm a genius, so if I say you're a genius, I must know what I'm talking about, right?"

"Ahhhh! Brilliant!"

"Of course it is! But why stop there? We're not only smart while they're stupid... we're good while they're evil! Hell, if we want to, we can convince most everybody that we're heroes and they're villains! We could even eventually be perceived as something... super-human! Only a fool would doubt it! After all, we've decided that the very definition of a fool is someone who disagrees with us! Think about that! Who could dare to disagree? Soon, everyone will be clamoring to follow us, begging us to take power, to save them from the things they fear, to lead them to a better, brighter future!"

"So," interrupted yet another board member, "it will be that easy, will it?"

"Well, only if we can take control of all of the means of spreading the message. We need all of our minions and the useful idiots who believe in our vision of the world to take over the media, the schools, and the arts. So we start encouraging them to pursue these careers as a means of changing the world! Who could resist? Once we have a majority of control, we start purging anyone in those fields who doesn't agree with us from their ranks!"

"We also need to get absolute control of one of the two major political parties in every country," Charles continued, "of course, we have already made quite a great deal of progress on that front. America, with its rather annoying tendency toward individualism, will be a little more difficult nut to crack than the rest of the West, but with time, it too will fall under our spell. Then come the courts. After all, we need to make certain that they will uphold all of the unconstitutional crap we pass into law despite all of the quite obvious violations of the constitution!"

Laughter shook the room.

"I'm impressed, Charles," proclaimed Mr. S. "This may prove to be the most devious scheme in the history of mankind! Let us get to work!"

Thursday, September 6, 2012

As a public service, America is an Obamanation now presents, for those who may have missed it, the Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, as delivered by Obama Administration Spokeswoman, Julia...

"Many people look at me and see someone who is one-dimensional and incapable of independent thought, and you know something, they are right... which is why I feel right at home in the modern day Democratic Party!"

"Yeah!"

"Thank you so much for wearing the 3-D glasses, I know that you're all just trying to make me feel better, but I am afraid that won't help the situation. I am proud to be one-dimensional, and will always remain one-dimensional!"

"You tell 'em!"

"That being said, let me get something off of my chest! I am fed up with all of the haters out there on the Right calling me a 'cartoon'! The word 'cartoon' is nothing short of hate speech, another Right-Wing racist dog-whistle meant to demean and belittle myself and other one-dimensional beings like me, and we are not going to let them call us by that awful, filthy, racist word anymore!"

"Gasp!"

"From this day forth, we will be known as Illustrated-Americans!"

"That's Right! And worst of all, the Republicans and their hateful, bigoted allies are hard at work right now trying to purge Illustrated-Americans from the voter registration rolls all over America, undoing years of hard work by ACORN, the SEIU, and other fine organizations who have attempted to give us a voice through others who could go into polling places all over America and cast ballots in the name of such great Illustrated-Americans as Mickey Mouse, Elmer Fudd or Homer Simpson! Don't such beloved figures deserve a voice in our elections? How dare they try to deny us our right to have people vote in our names multiple times in multiple precincts in important swing states and key Congressional Districts all over this great land! Make no mistake, voter ID laws are hateful bigotry against Illustrated-Americans, Deceased-Americans, Undocumented-Americans, and various other bizarre figments of people's imaginations and must be stamped out!"

"Yeah! You go, girl!"

"And another thing! What's all this crap I keep hearing about freedom meaning personal responsibility? As if! Why can't I enjoy the freedom to graduate with an advanced degree in something fun yet useless, like Gender Studies, never have to worry about paying back my student loans, and live at home with my Mom well into my 30s or 40s and have access to free universal healthcare, free birth control and free abortion services? I appreciate the fact that I have a President who doesn't want me to be punished for my mistakes with a little doodle or squiggle that I am unprepared and unwilling to care for! Mr. Ryan, I and many other young Americans consider it a privilege to spend our 20s sitting at home in their childhood bedroom staring at posters of such a wonderful and great man and would be more than happy to continue to do so for decades to come!"

"Yeah!"

"Let's face it, the Republicans are just a bunch of meanies and buzz-kills who don't think the richest among us can afford to pay a little more to take care of those of us who deserve more free goodies! I say, why can't they afford to pay more? After all, does Richie Rich really need another mountain of money to ski down? No! Does Scrooge McDuck really need another vault full of gold coins to dive into? I don't think so! And don't let them try to confuse you with all their fancy math that shows that even if we confiscated every last penny from the wealthiest Americans, we still couldn't afford the ever-increasing cost of ever-growing government because we simply don't want to hear it!"

"They keep telling us that we're drowning in red ink. Ha! As an Illustrated-American, I know a thing or two about red ink, and believe me when I tell you, it feels no different from black ink, blue ink or any other color of ink!"

"Hooray for red! ...Except when states turn that color on Election Night!"

"If math doesn't support our world view, then it is up to us to change how math works, because Heaven knows, our world view isn't going to change no matter how badly it conflicts with their nasty version of reality!"

"Their reality sucks!"

"Thank you, good night! And may Gaia deliver us from our Rethuglican enemies!!!"